Crazyflie KiCad project released

2013-07-29 | Tobias | Leave a comment

We finally got the time to clean-up the Crazyflie kicad project enough to make it publicly available. It is not in a perfect shape but should be good enough to use and learn from. It’s a 4 layer board with signal layers on bottom and top and power planes in the middle. We have also uploaded the custom kicad-libs parts which should be placed in the same directory level as the kicad projects in order to make use of them, it also includes Crazyradio kicad parts.

It is released under CC BY-NC-SA license so you are able to use if for personal use, and please respect that. Please also give us feedback if you have some comments or find something that could be improved!

It’s like an avalanche…

2013-05-20 | Tobias | 7 Comments

Development is starting to accelerate and we are really having a hard time catching up on pull-requests and forum activity. It’s like an avalanche, once it is started, it is impossible to stop :-). We are also doing our best on the support side and we want to send out a big thank you to all the users that help out with all the support as well. Just to name a few: foosel, alex, skube, TheFrog4u, DesTinY, atimicdog, etc. The list will be too long to list all but you know who you are, many thanks!

We will soon be releasing a new cf-client that will close some bugs and especially the OSX bug which could make your Crazyflie go full throttle if the controller is accidentally disconnected during flight.

Our to do list is currently huge but this is a subset of what’s on the list right now.

Implementing GUI in the cf-client for updating the Crazyradio.
Updating the wiki and especially the trouble shooting page.
Fixing bugs
Implementing brushless controller driver.
Support
Accepting pull-requests
Administration
Cleaning up in the forum
Planing JavaForum presentation
Crazyradio PPM input
…

As you can imagine we have our free time pretty much planned out :-).

Crazyflies all over the world

2013-05-06 | Tobias | 22 Comments

It’s been an incredible week seeing people from all over the world getting their Crazyflies into the air!! We have seen videos of people doing crazy stuff we never thought of, 3D models of cases and frames on Thingiverse and of course a lot of images of people unpacking and assembling their Crazyflies. The wiki is receiving some well needed updates and everyone is helping out answering questions in the forum. It’s really great for us to see this project come to life after such a long time and as far as we can tell we have a lot of happy users, even though there’s still a few people struggling with issues.

Like we said last week, this is the first time we distribute the software/firmware/hardware widely and there’s a few bugs that has been found. We are currently correcting the most important ones and will post updates for the firmware and software once we fix enough of them. If you want to follow the progress drop by the bug tracker on Bitbucket for the PC-client, Crazyflie and Crazyradio.

We are doing our best to answer questions and give support in the forum, but there’s a couple of issues that we would like to highlight to make the assembly and usage easier for everyone. Please be careful with your new Crazyflies, they are not unbreakable.

After the motor wires has been soldered make sure to inspect for shorts and especially to the resistors, red highlighted area, in the picture as it can damage the digital voltage regulator. This will show up as that the blue LEDs wont light up and the other LEDs will be dim. To fix this the regulator U9 will have to be exchanged. It is the SOT23-6 package in the picture.

The Crazyradio doesn’t work on USB3 ports but a fix is on the way. Until then the work-around is to use USB2 ports.

If the Crazyflie crashes upside down there is a chance the motor bearing gets depressed. There is a protection for this and that is to carefully glue a spacer between the motor and the propeller, similar to what we have done in the picture. That will prevent the propeller from pushing on the bearing but will instead be pushing on the spacer which will absorb the force much better. The spacer needs to be higher then the motor bearing else it will not work that well.

Loading an already existing input-device configuration in the PC-client does not work, the best is to start from scratch (see this issue). Also when configuring the input-device you will have to map all the axis and buttons before you can save the configuration (see this issue). For more information on device-input configuration see this page on the wiki.

Unfortunately the production of the new motor-mounts has been delayed and they will not be available for order until next week. But the kits that are currently in stock still contains a spare motor-mount.

Happy flying!!

Soon pre-orders will start shipping

2013-04-22 | Tobias | 22 Comments

It’s been a really hectic last couple of weeks and we are now very close to shipping the first batch of Crazyflies. It is a very big step for us so we would like to start by thanking you for your support! We wouldn’t be able to do this without your support and we really hope you will be pleased with the product and that it lives up to your expectations!

There are some updates to the pre-order kits which we hope you will be happy about. We have added two extra propellers in each kit. We have also updated the motor mounts to real moulded ones which should be easier to work with and more durable. They don’t require any glue, handles impacts and vibration better. The 3D printed motor mounts was not a viable solution when the volume increased so we have been working really hard on getting these ready in time. Since the new motor mount wasn’t available to order as a spare part during the pre-order, we have include a spare one in the kit for you.

Assembled Crazyflie with new motor mounts

The pre-order shipments will start as announced, on Apr. 25th, and finish on Apr. 30th. Orders will be shipped out in the order they where placed so second batch orders will be shipped a bit earlier with the last order going out on Apr. 30th. Since Seeedstudio got a lot more pre-orders than expected, the first batch orders will need some more time for packaging and delivery and couldn’t all be shipped on Apr.25th, please understand.

Keep in mind that we are still doing development on both the firmware and software as well as continuously updating the wiki. So once you get your Crazyflie visit our page to get the latest updates and information on how to assemble the kit and start flying. Updating the firmware only takes a few minutes and you will get the latest features.

Thank you!
Bitcraze

Assembly video

2013-01-29 | Tobias | 8 Comments

Back in November when we got the pre-series we shot an assembly video showing how to assemble a Crazyflie kit. We shot it in Tobias shed in his back garden where it was about 10*C, that’s why Marcus is wearing a winter jacket. It was also pretty late and it’s the 7th Crazyflie in a row that we have tested and assembled, so we where pretty tired. We are not trying to find excuses but it might not have been our best work. For example the words “the best way” is frequently used, and due to our Swedish heritage, “one good way” might have been more appropriate, but that day we where just feeling confident :-).

If you have ~8 minutes to spare have a look at the video, so you know what to expect in terms of assembly, when you pretty soon will be able to pre-order the kit.

The pre-series has arrived!

2012-11-26 | Tobias | 16 Comments

Finally our yearning has come to an end, the Crazyflie kit pre-series did arrive from Seeedstudio today! We have not had time to do any extensive testing but so far so good, yay! We did however have time to program and assemble one and it flies really well. It feels like the change we did to route the motor supply directly to the battery and not trough the power management circuit made a difference. The acceleration punch when maxing out the throttle feels stronger. We have uploaded some pictures of the received package. What is still not included in this package are the motor mounts which we ordered separately from Shapeways. The motor mount is one of the last things to sort out before the kit can be ready. We are working on a moulded version which will be much cheaper in bigger quantities but it takes way more time then we expected. We might go with rapid prototyped mounts instead to make it available sooner.

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The upcoming week is going to be very interesting as the testing will determine if we can go to the next step!

Wiki is now published

2012-11-19 | Tobias | 4 Comments

Since the very beginning of the project we have been maintaining a wiki. At first mostly for internal communication and documentation but more recently we have been focusing on making an easily accessible documentation for the Crazyflie kit.

We now think the wiki is good enough to be released. It is still a “work in progress” but most of the basics are there and it will be updated as we go along. On the wiki we plan to have all information regarding the Crazyflie and other projects. We also intend to complement the wiki with a forum which will be the next step.

The wiki is located at wiki.bitcraze.se and can also be accessed via the wiki link in the navigation bar.

Protective frame prototype

2012-10-29 | Tobias | 4 Comments

While we are waiting for the pre-series to arrive, which hopefully will be within 4-5 weeks, we have tested this idea we have had for a while. On the Crazyflie PCB we placed mounting holes in each corner for the possibility to add e.g. a landing gear, canopy or maybe a protective frame. The holes are about 0.9mm and plated so it is possible to solder something in it and a protective frame made of piano wire would be a good candidate.

We bought a couple of 0.8 mm thick 1m long piano wires at a nearby hobby store and got to work. On the first try we bend the wires into the shape solely by hand and it didn’t look or work well at all. We figured there must be some better way! And after searching the net we found this site explaining how to make your own DIY springs of different types. We however needed a circle with a much bigger diameter than normal springs use so it took us a while to find a tube with the right diameter to bend it around to get the right size. We found out that when bending the piano wire around a tube with the diameter of 20mm it ended up at about 55mm which was close enough to the 60mm we needed. Piano wire is a bit hard to solder but with plenty of solder flux it works well. We are pretty pleased with the result!

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The piano wire frame itself weights about 3.5-4g so it is within the acceptable payload limit. The flight characteristics is changed a bit making it more controllable but less agile which is perfect for beginners. We have tested throwing it in the ground and crashing it several times and the Crazyflie just bounces so it works great. It might even be possible to go to a smaller piano wire diameter to save weight because now the frame is very stiff. Next step would be to come up with a design that could be attached/detached without soldering. It should also be cheap and easy to manufacture.

Another key-chain camera hack

2012-10-15 | Tobias | 11 Comments

We discovered a new key-chain video camera which is called the 808#16. It had gotten a pretty good review so we decided to give the video camera add-on hack yet another try. A while ago we tried it with a 808#14 but it didn’t work that well when we where running it directly from the Crazyflie battery. It shut down as soon as we used to much throttle and using a separate battery made it to heavy. We didn’t have to high hopes for the 808#16 either and when we discovered that the bare camera weight, no battery nor case, was about 9g we knew it would be at the maximum of what the Crazyflie could carry. With high hopes we connected the camera directly to the Crazyflie battery terminal and gave it a try.

It worked! The camera didn’t shut down but as you can see the stability is pretty bad during take-off. Once in the air it is controllable but only barely. We haven’t tested the full flight time but it probably wont be more then 2-3 minutes. We are thinking of doing a test where we add 4 more motors “mirrored” directly underneath the existing ones to increase the payload capability. Would be nice to have that option and it should be fairly simple to do.

We are pretty impressed with the video of the 808#16 which still is very cheap. We bought the 808#16 camera with the D-lens which is a wide angle lens and that’s why the video has a bit of a fish-eye.

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LED hack

2012-09-17 | Tobias | 3 Comments

When I was shopping for some ink-cartridge at this Swedish accessory store named Kjell&Co I also bought one of these 12V LED lamps. I didn’t buy it to actually use it instead I bought it to have a look inside. I cracked it open when I came home and found, not so surprisingly, a lot of LEDs and a step up converter with a current sensing mode. Since it was made for 12V AC I removed the rectifier bridge and a large cap to get it as light as possible. Testing it with a power supply reviled that it worked all the way down to 2.2V and at 3.7V it consumed about 0.5A. A bit to much for the Crazyflie so I doubled the current sensor resistors to get it down to 0.25A. Some soldering and some double sided foam tape and we suddenly have a pretty bright lamp hooked up to the Crazyflie. Now we have a search&rescue device :-) or maybe just an UFO…

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Let’s not forget the sensor poll. It’s a very close encounter with 55% wanting the extra sensors. We will keep the poll open until next week to see if it gets any clearer.